Poor artifacts list/ideas for them!

[SageAcrin]

A little while ago, I aired the idea of creating an artifact list, similar to the talent list I made.

This generally recieved positive feedback, so here I am. As a rule, I'll be trying to compare artifacts to one another, as statistical data on who uses what is a weird thing, especially for niche equips; A given person may desperately have wanted to use, say, Penitance, but not gotten it, while another may not have cared about it, gotten it, and ditched it, on the same class/race combo. This is going to end up somewhat more subjective as such, but hopefully I can keep things remotely objective.

Also, I'm going for anything that has clearly defined issues in my mind. Bill's Treetrunk is boring, but it's also simple and an earlygame item in a game that, well, has newbies. I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

Of course, more suggestions are welcome, as before.

Spellblaze Echoes:

Amulet; 6 Armor, 6 Defense. Can be activated to dig a radius of 3 around you, as well as deal(100+Magic*2) damage, with a power consumption of 300/300. Material Level 4, L30-39 range.

Issue: Mostly an artifact of the changes to charms; Originally, this could be used as a swap equip; You go in, swap this on, then switch back, giving this a niche of a kind-not necessarily a great one, because I'm not entirely sure how often you actually want to blow a large hole in the surrounding terrain and create an open room to fight in, but a thoughtful person could use it occasionally.

Now, it requires 300 turns of wearing a 6 Armor/6 Defense amulet that is way worse than any other option by L30. Comparing this to other artifacts of its tier is unecessary-it loses to a majority of Stralite egos.

Ideas: +Blight Damage/Resist, +Magic, +spellpower, etc. are obvious answers, but boring. Off the top of my head, the idea that seems most appealing though would be to make it a +spellcritical(6) and give it a form of on-spell-critical effect(Perhaps something as simple as a low damage burst of blight), as this would make it extremely distinctive among amulets. 300 is probably a little high either way, considering the longest talent recharge is 104 IIRC; I'd suggest 80.

Feathersteel:

Amulet; -20% Fatigue, +20 Encumberance, ignore pressure traps. Material Level 2, 5-15 range.

Issue: Another case where comparison isn't useful, as the equip is niche designed. Most people seem to not value its upsides, from my experience. This is somewhat subjective, of course. Encumberance is something people tend to not feel is a big deal in general(I personally agree, once you get the Chest). -20% Fatigue is excellent for...Arcane Blades and a few extremely off-pace weird class builds. Even an Archmage that wants to wear armor probably won't give up the slot(partially because they'd want to build up huge Mana costs for Disruption Shield but I digress). But in practice it tends to not get thought of. And pressure traps were undervalued before, but now the complex traps generally mean that it's less value-you might stop some of them, but you'll still get hit by a spinning beam.

Ideas: The change to Feather Wind makes for an obvious idea here; Have it grant Movement speed. 10% would be be good for a short term equip, while 20% could produce a decent longer term niche.

Burning Star:

Lite; 5 Lite radius. Can be activated for 20 radius magic mapping, consuming 100 power out of 150. Level 20-30, Material Level 3.

Issue: Well, you can give up 24 stat points from either Guidance or Eldritch Pearl(among plusses) to...get a Vision spell every 150 turns. Like Spellblaze Echoes, this is questionable, but Vision is probably less valuable than the unique impact of Spellblaze Echoes(and seems to be very little valued in general to judge by people's general picks from Sages). It does appear before the two mentioned items, but there's a solid argument for the Healing Modifier and Illuminate effects from the Summertide Phial being better... This is another victim of the changes to charms, as it used to be on-demand mapping in practice.

Ideas: This equip is such a blank slate that restoring its old functionality seems the most logical simple suggestion. Dropping the cost from 150 to 5-10, so that someone can swap it in, wait a bit, and then map at a quiet time, would be the logical answer to do that. Boosting it as a standard equip could go in very nearly any direction.

Dragon-helm of Kroltar:

Helmet; 5 Defense, 9 Armor, 10% Fatigue, +5 Strength/Con, -4 Luck. Can be activated for L2 Warshout, costing 45 Energy out of 45. 37-45 level range, material level 4.

Issues: Extremely bad competition with other helmets. Crown of Command is a lower material/level equip that grants 3 Defense/6 Armor/4% Fatigue/+3 Con/+10 Will, +8% Physical Resistance, and +.2% to two physical categories. The only selling point the helm has is the activate, and the cooldown on that is simply a little too long to make it useful unless you constantly rest to full(and even then, the low level on it means that it, say, can't range far enough to strike at most of the Pride-entry danger zones.).

Ideas: Make it a set with the Scale Mail of Kroltar. That this isn't already a set is confusing, honestly. The Scale Mail of Kroltar generally gets used the least out of the various armor artifacts(From my recollection, I've seen Cuirass of the Thronesman used more, even.), so both could use the help. For bonuses...perhaps higher defenses on Kroltar's mail and various status resistances on Kroltar's helm, off the top of my head?

Temporal Augmentation Robe - Designed in Style:

Robe; 9 Defense, 3 Armor. +5 Magic, +3 Willpower, +20% Temporal Resist, +20% Temporal Damage, +20% Temporal Resistance Penetration, +5% Temporal Resistance Cap, +10 Temporal damage on hit. Can be activated for Damage Smearing at L3, using 100 power out of 100. 30-40 level range, material level 4.

Issue: Good defensive bonuses and a solid niche makes this look like a very solid use for...well, the one class that cares. Unfortunately, it breaks down a bit on examination with the other robe with the same range and material type, Robe of the Archmagi. Which is +10 Defense/Armor/+12% All damage/+4 Magic/Will/Cun/+15 Spellpower/+18 Spell Resist/+15 Mental Resist/+40% Blind Immunity/Resists Fire/Cold 10%/+1 Lite/+1 Mana regen. This is a bit of a gap-Archmagi provides excellent everything, including, depending on your spellpower, possibly even more damage for Temporal skills in practice. This is mostly in competition with a 100 recharge defensive skill that only really appeals to Paradox Mages, and which doesn't get really highly regarded in general.

Ideas: Generally boosting its defensive stat bonuses(Defense/Armor) would fit its role as a defensive robe, as would lowering the cooldown on the Smearing, but the biggest change should probably be giving it Spellpower. Archmagi grants 15, Black Robe grants 30. Temporal Robe being somewhere in that range(I'd suggest 20) would give it a solid niche that would allow it to compete at endgame. The total lack is a fairly large hit.

Zemekkys' Broken Hourglass:

Amulet; +4 Will, +10% Temporal Damage, +20% Temporal Resistance, +5% Temporal Resistance Cap. Can be used to cast L2 Wormhole, at a cost of 60 out of 60. Level Range 30-40, material level 4.

Issue: It's generally okay for Paradox Mages, specifically, which already have the activation skill but may want +10% damage...then again, they could just use any number of other bonuses for their amulet through standard egos, as this isn't really a lot of damage. The resistances, outside of Damage Smearing abuse, are fairly minor. And the teleport, while okay, is oddly weak competition to Serpentine Cloak(the main other teleportation oriented artifact), which, combined with the totally Chronomancer-oriented bonuses, make this one of the most ridiculously narrow range artifacts in the game.

Ideas: Well, any number of things work for it(Stats, spellpower, whatever), but honestly I'd suggest something neat like a +10% range Global Speed bonus. Another option would be to give it -10% spell cooldown, similar to the rare boots ego.

Gravitational Staff:

Staff; 28 base Damage rating, 8 APR, 130% Magic Damage Modifier, Gravitypin type damage. 18 Spellpower, 8 Spellcrit, +14% Gravity Damage, +8% Temporal Damage, +10% Physical Resistance, +.2 Gravity category. Can be used to cast Gravity Spike L3, using 35 power out of 35. Level Range 25-33, Material Level 3.

Issue: Penitence is a 15/10 Spellpower/Spellcrit staff with a decent enough itemcast and similarly irrelevant-to-most-classes secondary bonuses(Indeed, there's a solid argument for 30% Blight resistance being better than 10% physical). It is 10-18 level range and Material Level 2, meaning it shows up 15 levels earlier. Bolbum's similarly is niche and is found in the same range, and is 12 Spellpower/18 Spellcrit, and actually raises physical damage more(And, at least in theory, the niche of being able to beat people with a staff is useful to any mage that has found an Alchemist). It's an okay enough Paradox Mage option, but it needs more broadening.

Idea: Raise the Spellpower to 25. This makes it essentially Penitence for the midgame, a staff that you would wield for Spellpower if you don't value a specific damage type very much.

Trident of the Tides:

Trident; 60 base Damage rating, 4 APR, 15 Physical Critical, 130% Strength modifier, +15 Cold/+20 Nature damage on hit, +10 Accuracy, +18 Spell Save, +2 See Invisible, +25% Cold Resistance, +20% Cold Damage increase. Can cast Water Bolt L3, consuming 60 power out of 150. (Water Bolt deals Spellpower based damage that never ends up very high.) Level Range 30-40, Material Level 4, generally will be obtained in the Temple of Creation if anywhere.

Issue: As a raw comparison to Drake's Bane-Which is L20-35 Material Level 3-this isn't so bad, though Drake's Bane's 9% physical resistance and 20% Stun Resistance makes up for the lack of power in comparison. Which is to say, it's matching, at best, a much earlier weapon. However, the real killer is that it's Exotic, meaning that a heavy investment is required to bring it up to the same level of power of any other weapon, especially now that the weapon power changes mean that leveling Weapon Mastery does literally nothing for an Exotic weapon.

Idea: This should probably be, relative to the power, out of place good, not out of place bad, in order to encourage builds involving it. 76 base damage would put it into the high-end twohanders for raw power, while high APR(20) would fit it being a piercing weapon. For a more pronounced niche, some level of Spellpower boosting(15? 20? There are no really good spellpower twohanders, besides staffs), on-hit ability to cast Water Bolt(ala how Crystalline Focus weapons can on hit Manathrust) 50% of the time, and an activate that instead casts Water Jet or Freeze at decent levels would be a fairly good overhaul for this.

Petrified Wood:

Gem; +25% Nature Resistance, +10% Cold Resistance, -10% Fire Resistance, +10 Con. L35-45, Material Level 5, dropped by Snaproot.

Issue: Well, the Fire resistance doesn't really match the old Wrathroot Shield anymore, and as a net overall thing it's extremely weak, dropping a more common resist to a damage type and raising two less common ones, then adding +10 to one stat when a Diamond can +5 all of them.

Ideas: Give it +10% Darkness resistance instead of -10% Fire Resistance(matches the shield tweak) and make it Material Level 4. All of the special gems being Material Level 5 means that you have to directly compete with much harder competition like Telos' Staff Crystal and Goedaleth, which this will lose out to even with that bonus.

Lifebinding Emerald:

Gem; +10 Constitution, +30% Healing Factor, +2.00 Life Regeneration, +10% Blight Resistance. Gained by getting the final item for the right alchemist.

Issue: Again, loses out fairly directly to Telos Staff Crystal and Goedaleth Rock. It's not as bad as what happened to Petrified Wood, but it's still fairly bad, especially since Goedaleth beats it at the same game of Healing Modifier. Characters will usually prioritize any Voratun blanks they get for the *chance* at being able to slot one of those two, or possibly a tier 5 gem they value more highly.

Ideas: Again, making it a tier 4 gem seems logical.

Molten Staff:

60 base damage range, 6 APR, 5 physicalcrit, 135% damage modifier, damage type Fireburn. 20 Spellpower, 10 Spellcrit, +20% Fire Damage, +24% Fire resistance, -10% Cold resistance, +10% fire resistance penetration. +.1 Fire and Wildfire categories. Can be activated for Flame (L5), consuming 5 power out of 6, and has a 20% chance of casting Flame (L2) on hit. Level range 40-50, material level 5, drops from Heavy Sentinel.

Issue: Lost Staff of Archmage Tarelion has literally twice the Spellpower and 10% more Fire Damage, in addition to lowering the cooldown on Fireflash, one of the strongest tools in an Archmage's library. This is in addition to it doing non-fire things. Telos Top is onehanded, has 30 Spellpower and can get 35% fire damage. The activation is the only real motivation for a non-Archmage to ever equip it, and while an Anorithil or a Necromancer may use it, it would be at the cost of crushing their general damage thanks to the terrible Spellpower.

Ideas: Higher Spellpower and Fire damage would help, but having talked it over with Pure, Pure's idea is probably to simply replace it instead, with a new fire-oriented equip.

Lesser ideas:

These aren't really majorly flawed artifacts, but artifacts I've heard complaints about getting, or artifacts that are okay but generally flawed in somewhat limited niche use or something similar.

-Lunar Shield is an interesting shield for Anorithils, but rather lackluster overall(Though, not nearly useless). An interesting niche to distinguish it, as well as seal it as a clearly useful option for Anorithil, would be to drop the Fatigue drastically-making it a 4%-6% Fatigue shield would make it the obvious "mage" shield, which is a fairly unique niche. Considering it's constructed out of potentially lightweight shell, this is thematic. And I don't think it would end up too powerful at all.

-Flamewrought has a small problem-It attempts to have a niche, but 5% damage boost to fire and 10% fire resistance are not good enough as earlygame selling points. However, it is more useful than nothing. Perhaps higher Fire damage% would give it a stronger niche?

-Prox's Lucky Foot is, generally, considered inferior to Tooth of the Mouth-the only people that want +5 Defense are Defense tank builds, and generally the rest is not that useful. Given the trap oriented nature of the item, perhaps it could get a power based activation to either range 1 reveal or range 1 destroy traps? I think the latter would be more useful, say 25/25 energy, radially destroy all traps in 1 range. And this would make its detection actually do something for people without trap skills(who would probably have been able to find that trap anyways).

-The Duathdlen Heart is pretty useful for people that specifically want to go Invisible, or for those that really want some added magical range offense, but the statistics are very close to null(Light damage is uncommon). This makes it usually hard to justify over Eldritch Pearl, despite it having a niche. Perhaps +spellpower, say 15(Eldritch Pearl grants 12) would make this more competitive outside of Invis builds? Or spellcrit/on hit(spell) effects?

-Voratun Hammer of the Deep Bellow has a solid niche, but again, there are few magic-oriented twohanders, and this is an obvious spot to make an Arcane Blade ultimate-level twohander(+fire damage, +spellpower).

-Pendant of Sun and Moons is a good Anorithil artifact, but for anyone else, Vox is better at the same game, unless you're more afraid of light/dark damage than you are Silence, as a mage. Perhaps a higher level or less cooldown version of the itemcast would help make it more of a universal draw? Or both, even?

-Unsetting Sun focuses on Darkness resist-an uncommon form of offense, and in the area it is most common, Blight is equally common-adding Lite, and some spell resist. Often, people are not going to choose a shield for its Spell Resist value, when they could choose something such as Sanguine Shield for its huge life regen. Perhaps some Cold Resistance would be a good idea as well.

[edge2054]

A couple of things.

Comparing Kor's Fall (a tier 1 artifact I believe) to a greater ego isn't a good correlation. Keep in mind that all greater egos will be being pushed into the mid-game to late game relatively soon (early game gets the most play testing and with the introduction of all the new egos making sure they're debugged properly took precedence over game balance).

Prox's Lucky Foot I'm not sure on giving it disarm and detect. Would marginalize trap handling a bit to much. Maybe cunning/survival talent mastery though and a decent cunning boost (both of which would give players a solid 'in' to picking up enough trap handling for disarming).

The Heart is tier 4 and really isn't meant to be an end-game lite source. More mid/late-mid. Not saying it couldn't use a bit of a buff but it's not meant to compete directly with Eldritch Pearl or any other end game lite.

Otherwise I think this is a good write up and worth considering.

[SageAcrin]

I'd added Kor's Fall solely due to hearing complaints about it, and pulled it due to hearing complaints about its addition; If it's got supporters, it really doesn't need boosting, as far as I'm concerned.

I can see that, with the Foot-that's why I also made the suggestion of adding detection as a castable effect. This would make it able to detect traps while still being somewhat less useful than having the ability to detect traps normally would be. A Cunning/Survival boost is a good suggestion as well, though-at +.2, it could allow some heavy Survival classes to start disabling traps a level earlier.

Duathdlen would only end up as good as Pearl at spellcasting-Pearl provides a ton of other, interesting boosts, whereas Duathdlen would end up only good at the one thing. Though, thinking on it, maybe something that doesn't directly compete with the Pearl, like Spellcrit or on-hit spell, would make even more sense.

(There's also the fact that the Heart is generally accessable about the same time in practice, since you can get the Eldritch Pearl as soon as you reach the East. You might get the Heart in late Dreadfell, Reknor or the Elven Ruins, but it isn't very common in any of those places. Having said that, I'm not against raising its level a little, either, if this is a major worry.)

[Sirrocco]

The lifebinding emerald is at least partially useful for mindslayers, who really like the opportunity to get a material 5 gem before heading east. Similarly, it's likely the first tier 5 gem that an alchemist will be able to get his hands on - for them, it might as well *be* tier 4. Making it interesting or useful for other classes gets to be the more interesting part. Possibly some sort of equilibrium regen? That'd leave it with its niche benefits for alchemists and mindslayers, and add in some possible utility for wyrmics, summoners, and antimagic types.

Reducing the material level for Snaproot's drop doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense either - by the time you can fight him and get the thing, you should be sporting tier 5 gear anyway, right? Instead, it's a defensive gem - so crank the defense. Do the fire-vuln-for-dark-res switch that you mentioned, and then pile a gob of armor on the thing.

[SageAcrin]

Gems require a ring of equal or greater material rank in order to be set, for all non-Stone Alchemy users, in order to use them. This means that all the tier 5 gems compete for that one Voratun Ring you have(Or two slots on your Voratun Amulet, if you do Gem of the Moon).

For anyone but Mindslayer, the distinction is practically null-anyone that bothers with Imbue at all will surely hit 5 in it. And Mindslayers being able to get a tier 5 gem potentially before a tier 3 is vaguely abusive, and, more important, encourages resets to get better lists of ingredients, so I'm not sure it's entirely a good thing.

[PureQuestion]

My b41 updates to b42:

Molten Staff scrapped for Molten Skin, a very potent light armor.

Gravitational staff buffed in almost every way.

Sceptre of the Archlich dropped to mat level 4, level range dropped, some stats lowered, some raised, added star-fury mastery bonus to increase appeal for anorithils.

[Sirrocco]

I'm finding it a bit difficult to believe that you could finish all three alchemist sub-quests prior to getting your first tier 3 mindstar or gem - and if you do, it's because they've been dropping slower than they should anyway. Resets to get better lists of ingredients seems a bit much as a thing to worry about - if people want to cheat, there are ways to cheat, and given that the current alchemist material setup lets you finish the quests prior to heading east, if you were going to cheat, why would it be on this?

If you're looking for a different way to make it a bit more universally accessible, perhaps give it a consuming usable effect - allow it to imbue an unenchanted leather armor or something similar.

[donkatsu]

If by "reset" you mean "leave starting dungeon on turn 1, go get alchemist quests, and if the ingredient list is bad, start new character" then that would be scummy, but not technically cheating in any way.

green worm, ghoul, skeleton mage, red crystal, bear, troll, orc, frost ant, minotaur, honey tree, spider, bloated horror, electric eel, squid, sandworm, black mamba, snow giant, xorn, war, hummerhorn, and luminous horrors all drop ingredients that you could get before level 20, which is when you just barely start finding tier 3 equipment, so with the right set of ingredients it's quite feasible to finish the 3 subquests before finding your first tier 3 gem or mindstar. Nothing difficult to believe about that.

[Sirrocco]

Yeah, but three of those *must* be on Stire of Derth, and if you're scumming for it, you'll need to have two of the others have three from that list as well. I'll admit that it's possible, but it isn't real likely, and it wouldn't be worth it anyway. You're talking heavy birthscumming (and losing the ground-drops for the first level of your first dungeon) in order to make the mid-game somewhat easier. You also have to be willing to just accept only getting three potions, which is potentially a permanent loss. Also, electric eel, at least, is a bit luck-based. I've had characters who pretty much cleared the early west who didn't get it.

Basically, I don't buy it. I'm one of the grindier players here - I routinely birthscum for high-level Norgans, for example - and I wouldn't bother with it. Birthscum extensively (you'd have to do this a lot - and runnign around to all fo the different alchemists tkes *time*) for a benefit that won't kick in until level 15, that won't last past level 30 or so, and that interferes with potentially getting a permanent boost? No, thank you.

Oh... and if Stire isn't the one getting love from the other completions, it fails utterly. To *guarantee* getting the lifebinding gem (not worth it), you have to run Stire all the way, and you won't know what his second set of ingredients are until you've finished the first. Yeah. This plan doesn't work.

[SageAcrin]

If the plan doesn't work, then downgrading the gem's tier wouldn't be a big deal then, would it?

As you said, it's not worth it to them, either, rendering there really no problem with dropping it to 4.

Basically, either it's a non-factor to the Mindslayer, or it produces, as has been really shown, grindy and possibly non-optimal play to get an early, shiny impact. So it's either a non-factor or bad to have at tier 5.

[Sirrocco]

No. I didn't say "no impact". I said "Can't meaningfully get it before you could get tier 3 gems/mindstars". There's a difference. You aren't going to find any other tier 5 gems/mindstars before getting east, at least - which means that the lifebinding emerald, which you pick up when you'd otherwise have a tier 3 or tier 4, will have some benefit to being tier 5, but not necessarily an overwhelming one. You can't birthscum for it, because the alchemist quest harshly punishes attempts to birthscum it. Instead, you aim for it when you're turning in your alchemist quests. Some people aim for the invulnerability potion, some aim for the lifebinding emerald, and so forth. Sometimes you get it, in which case it's nifty, and some times you don't (because you risked it in order to get more or more useful potions, and something didn't work out). That's as it's supposed to be.

I'd also note the way in which the lifebinding emerald is distinct from the vast majority of artifacts out there. Most artifacts come as random drops - you may have a better chance of getting them off of their primary boss, but you get them kind of randomly. The lifebinding emerald you get for tweaking the alchemist quest in a specific way (or, more rarely, for picking Stire of Derth as your last alchemist, knowing that that will end the cycle, because he's got the best thing left, perhaps by a decent margin). It doesn't compete with "tier 5 artifact". It competes with the Elixir of Invulnerability, Taint of Telepathy, and Infusion of Wild Growth. Admittedly, it's a bit niche in its use. So are all the other options. There are ways to make it not as niche, but I'd ask that you nto take away the niche that is has to do that.

Sidebar to that... I'm arguing this position because I like Mindslayers, and I think that the idea that they can tweak things so as to get a tier 5 gem (though a somewhat underpowered one) a bit early is kind of cool. I don't want to see that summarily taken away from them just so that we can have a gem that might be able to compete for a ring slot for mid-to-late-but-not-real-late game. What's your dog in this fight? Do you just want to see a few tier 4 artifact gems?

[SageAcrin]

"dog in this fight" is an interesting way to put it. My "dog in this fight" is making the artifact actually useful.

You're saying that an artifact that has one niche for one class-whose case, mind you, you have seriously undermined yourself-should be left that way, despite that at least 19 other classes have no use for it, and one class' uses are debatable.

It competes directly with "tier 5 artifact", since the only way you can use it for anyone outside of two classes(And Stone Alchemy builds) is by slotting it into a Ring/Amulet-which are for Voratun rarer than your average tier 5 artifact. For the latter, you have to compete with damage/durability boosters that, inevitably, have won out for a vast majority of players. It is niche, but one of the four other options doesn't compete with any slot-it is pure bonus-and the other two compete for infusion/rune slots-which you get many of, and have builds that limit you to runes or infusions. One of those two looks much better if you are AM, and the Taint works for both AM and Undead.

Simply making it stronger makes an already overfocused item-the Voratun blank ring, or amulet if you can complete the proper quest-even more valuable, if you succeed it making it compete with Telos Staff Crystal/Goedaleth Rock/tier 5 gems properly, and if you fail to, it's useless for everyone else. And the nail in this coffin is that, if you make it properly competitive, this means that both Alchemists and Mindslayers can now abuse its effects far earlier than everyone else, since an Alchemist can slot gems into a Golem/Mindslayers can equip a gem far earlier than you would normally get tier 5 equipment.

The only reason it's not terribly broken is that it's bad relative to its gem quality.

This is uselessly niche. It is entirely possible for a Mindslayer to scum for it, get a good first alchemist quest, even a second, then pick up a Wyrm tooth that they don't get until reaching East-a "neat" build gone down the tubes due to RNG luck-and it's similarly possible to get lucky and pull it up before tier 3. Compared to actually making the gem competitive for anyone else, there is no contest to me.

[Sirrocco]

...and this is why I was suggesting other options for making it useful. Lets ignore "stone alchemy via escort" builds for the moment. I'd say that for mindslayers and alchemists it's potentially nifty, though of limited duration. Dropping a mat level affects the alchemist not at all and hurts the mindslayer case (and I really don't see it as overpowered, given that it's competing with mindstars. I recently played with a mindslayer who got it shortly after the first tier 4 mindstars started dropping, and never quite got aroudn to equipping the thing)

So - my contention is that for these limited cases, dropping a mat level makes the game less cool, rather than more cool, but only marginally. I'll accept the argument that it could be the other way instead - I acknowledge that I wasn't being all that proactive about the alchemist quest. Let's focus on everyone who is not one of those two.

Taking it to mat level 4, aside from any effects on the gold, allows it to compete for a stralite ring slot. I really have very little idea of how well it would compete for a stralite ring slot, but I'm willing to accept your idea that it would be adequate to good. My best understanding is that after you've gotten to the point of heading back west, you've already filled pretty much all of your slots with material 5 gear regardless. I'm going to say that at that point, it's pretty useless. Thus, in order to find use in it, you have to finish the alchemist quest before you go east. Not too hard. Problem is, that means you get your reward, then you have to head east, get into the sunwall, and acquire a stralite ring before you can use the thing. Honestly, that seems a bit much of a wait for an ring that isn't all that overwhelmingly good to begin with. Thus, my suggestion of trying to make it cooler in ways that wouldn't matter to the alchemist/mindslayer types.

- Give it some bonus to a resource they don't care about. Equilibrium is the most obvious, but vim could be argued for as well. You might even be able to argue something interesting for necromancers, with the lifeBinding aspect. Basically, this increases the pool of people that might find it interesting to the point where it's reasonable as a reward that people pretty much have to choose to begin with. Giving it some sort of nice equilibrium effect would help summoners, wyrmics, and antimagic characters. It would also make the gem a bit better for antimagic mindslayers, which I see as a disadvantage (I think it's abotu where it should be for minslayers, honestly) but I don't see that as a huge drawback. Problem here is, as you noted, it's getting that extra interest by competing with voratun ring slots, which is even worse (in basically every way) than competing for stralite ring slots. I can definately see your argument there.

- Give it some other way to be consumed in a useful fashion, probably as an activation. You wouldn't want it to be an extra enchantment, because that might mean people would be saving it when they ought to be using it. Instead, allow it to enchant unenchanted items. Might not be appropriate for weapons, but if you allowed people to generate a base armor out of it, it would at least see some use. Shield might work better, though it would limit things to shield-users. In any case, it gets useful, but not forever, and its useful for a wide range of people. At the same time, it isn't made either more or less useful to the people who are using it already. For that matter, you could just give it an activation that would transform it into a ring (or possibly amulet. Hang it around your neck by a thong? Possible requires you to sacrifice a sling?). That's actually pretty strong, but I don't think it would be all that overpowered even so, and it would still be for a fairly limited duration.

[donkatsu]

...and it wouldn't be worth it anyway.

Moving goalposts. "Could" and "should" are not the same thing. While I agree with your conclusion that in its current state, the Emerald is useful but not overpowered to Mindslayers, it's just a pet peeve of mine when people use invalid arguments to support valid conclusions.

I'll admit that it's possible but it isn't real likely

This is all I was contending when you claimed this:

I'm finding it a bit difficult to believe that you could finish all three alchemist sub-quests prior to getting your first tier 3 mindstar or gem

Anyway, Emerald of Lifebinding competes with both tier 5 gems (for non-Mindslayer, non-Alchemist) classes), as well as the other alchemist rewards. It compares very poorly with tier 5 gems, which actually means that it's competitive with all of the other alchemist rewards, which are similarly terrible. Right now, I don't even bother with any of the final rewards. However, if the Emerald of Lifebinding becomes useful, I'll just shoot for that one every time, and then we're left with the question of "well what about the other rewards" which brings us back to the problem of having things that are useless compared to its competitors.

[Parcae2]

Yeah, to me, that last point is the crux of the issue. It makes no sense to rag on the Lifebinding Emerald when all the other rewards are similarly transmogrification material. In fact, Lifebinding is only useless 95% of the time and of questionable utility the rest of the time, whereas Taint of Telepathy and Infusion of Wild Growth are useless 100% of the time to every kind of character, and Elixir of Invulnerability is the last consumable left in the game and therefore non-thematic. If Lifebinding gets an overhaul (and it should), then so should the alchemist rewards in general, including the potions (because, with the exception of mindslayers headed for Lifebinding, I don't think I've ever seen a character that didn't prioritize class points/generics/occasionally crit chance over everything else).

My off-the-cuff and probably misplaced suggestions:

1. Change the class points reward to 4% mental crit chance
2. Change the generics reward to 4% crit damage
3. Change the various stat boosts from 3 to 4 (or maybe even 5), and the unspent stats from Marus (?) from 4 to 7
4. Change Telepathy to always-on with no downsides (even then, bear in mind that it takes an inscription slot from something that could save your life)
5. Change Infusion of Wild Growth to add a slowing effect
6. Let the player choose the material level (4 or 5) for Lifebinding
7. Elixir of Invulnerability: change it to an inscription that gives you a 2000-point shield for 2 turns with a very long cooldown; not affected by the aegis shielding talent

Then the end rewards would be good enough, and the potion rewards balanced enough, that I wouldn't always get the same rewards on every character.

Edit: Oh, and I have another suggestion - Rune of the Rift might need a buff. I gather they fixed the remove from time business, so maybe people are actually using it now, but I don't remember seeing it on any of the characters in the vault.